The Year in #Hoaxes

Ever since God punked Abraham into trying to sacrifice his son Isaac, the human race’s walk through history has been littered with banana peels and whoopee cushions. Twitter is nothing but the newest vehicle for this instinctual need to put one over on everybody else. And this year, we’ve been very busy.

Born on a 4chan board in January, this unsettling campaign aimed to manipulate members of Justin Bieber’s legion of fans into cutting themselves to protest recent revelations that the Biebs had been smoking weed. Within hours of its genesis, the gruesome hashtag was the most popular on Twitter; thankfully, it was removed shortly thereafter.

“The $HLF tug of war will in the end come down to who has more money to play with. I wouldn’t want to be in Bill’s shoes right now #TeamIcahn.”

A month after the release of Olympus Has Fallen, the world watched as life appeared to be imitating art when the Associated Press’s official Twitter account reported an attack on the White House. Though the White House and AP quickly denied the report, the Dow Jones took a hit, plummeting one hundred points before recovering after assurances that the report was false. The Syrian Electronic Army—the same group that would later be fingered as the culprit in the cyber attack on The New York TimesWeb site—claimed responsibility for the attack.

This year saw the fictional loss of another giantess of pop music. After Celine Dion’s heart stopped going on and Justin Bieber’s young life was cut tragically short in 2012, Cher’s inability to turn back time finally caught up with her in 2013. Admittedly, this one was more mass confusion than hoax, but still, Kim K’s tweet captured our collective panic perfectly: “Did I just hear that Cher has passed away? Is this real? OMG.”

Last week, the outer limits of tastelessness were tested when Twitter user @nQOW_bee tweeted a photo that purported to be the corpse of Nelson Mandela. Proving the Monty Python sketch strangely prophetic, the Mandela seen in that photo was not dead, just sleeping. As the Associated Press tweeted, the picture was actually a photo of Mandela “closing his eyes at ANC conference in Durban in July 1991.” Closing his eyes? Global icon or not, I think we’re being tricked again if we’re expected to believe he wasn’t taking a quick catnap.

Mandela’s death was the source of more than one hoax. Paris Hilton found herself the victim of a ruse when a tweet allegedly from the hotel heiress congratulated the great South African leader on having given a great African American’s speech—from 40 years ago. The tweet actually came from the notorious fake-celebrity Twitter account @deletedtweets. Issues of celebrity verification on the Web aside, Hilton’s Twitter response raises a more pressing question, can you tweet from a bedazzled Sidekick?

Michael Moore’s tweet vaunting his upcoming documentary about an anti-masturbation dolphin named Fappy was part of an online hoax that also included a detailed press release. In said release, Lonnie Childs, the presumably fictional president and founder of Stop Masturbation Now, was quoted as telling CNN: “What our organization does is designed to help make children and parents aware of the dangers of masturbation in and outside of the home. God willing, one day masturbation will be illegal.” It is unknown whether Moore is a victim or a party to the hoax. Regardless, somebody better call Errol Morris, because this guy Childs needs a documentary all his own.

Long believed to be a spambot whose tweets could often approach the level of non-sequitur poetry, in September it was revealed that the account had been acquired by BuzzFeed staffer Jacob Bakkila in 2011, and he had been tweeting from it ever since as part of a performance-art piece. With more than 200,000 followers, that’s one hell of an audience. As @Horse_ebooks might have put it: Son of a successful business starts there.

“GRAB THE SOUTHWEST BY THE BOTTLE”

When stand-up comic Kyle Kinane discovered that the Twitter account for Pace Salsa appeared to be a bot programmed to favorite any tweet mentioning the product, he had a field day that lasted the better part of ten hours. Highlights included the brand’s account favoriting Kinane’s tweet describing an unsavory interaction between his anus and their sauce, an obviously one-sided back-and-forth about Pace’s “vaguely homophobic” ad campaign, and the firing and re-hiring of one “Miles Wates,” overworked and underappreciated Pace employee. Unfortunately, the whole thing ended up being a ruse orchestrated by another comedian, Randy Liedtke. Bunch of f*cking comedians, these guys.

“Eat My Dick”

We would be remiss if we didn’t include the reality-television producer Elan Gale’s epic fight with “Diane” aboard a delayed flight headed home for Thanksgiving. Because nothing says Happy Thanksgiving quite as succinctly as “Eat My Dick,” Gale’s testy tête-a-tête with an obnoxiously rude travel mate blew up over the Turkey Day holiday. BuzzFeed posted a chronological recap of the tweet-fest, and Alec Baldwin even tweeted in support of Gale. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and Gale, 169,484 followers later, has since fessed up. Still, it was fun while it lasted.

What will next year hold? Surely a few more fake celebrity deaths. Perhaps a public Twitter breakup between @kanyewest and @kimkardashian? And where did all the unconfirmed nude celebrity Twitter pics go? I’m asking for a friend.